Deleting Fire Arrows Special Ability!

[Red Harvest]

It is possible to eliminate the fire arrow special ability. Some smarter person probably already has this figured out, but it stumped me when I first tried.

In the past I've been annoyed by the AI's penchant to shoot fire arrows at infantry, cavalry, birds flying by, etc. Unfortunately, the fire arrow special ability is tied to foot archers and is not directly modifiable as a unit stat as best I can tell. However, the HA bug led me to revisit the problem. I tried using the "thrown" attribute for archers as we did with HA's, but that didn't eliminate fire arrows. So next I tried the following edit for Roman Archers in the export_descr_units.txt file:

Original:
stat_pri 7, 2, arrow, 120, 30, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25 ,1

Altered:
stat_pri 7, 2, javelin, 120, 30, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25 ,1

This worked! The fire arrow special ability was gone. However, this had the drawback of 1) the projectile being a javelin 2) The arc and range are reduced because the javelin has a different trajectory.

After this success, I decided to try something in descr_projectile_new.txt

What I did was to copy the whole entry for "projectile arrow" and place this copy at the bottom of the page. I then changed this copied section's name to:

projectile arrow2

After this I went back to my Roman Archers and changed their stats to:

stat_pri 7, 2, arrow2, 120, 30, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25 ,1

Initial tests indicate that this is working without crashing the game, etc. The archers appear to behave normally, but no longer have the fire arrow special ability. I need to do some more testing and see if it interferes with anything, such as AI deployment, etc.

If anyone notices a problem with this, please post it. Thanks!

[Wh1teWolf]

Why the hell would you want to do that? Fire arrows drasticaly drop the moral of the enemy but is difficult against heavy armored troops, I usualy put a front rank of archers without fire arrows and a back rank using fire arrows and it works like a charm on annihalating my foes. Fire onagers realy increase that devestation the enemy receives.

[HarunTaiwan]

Because fire arrows weren't used in battles back then.

Fire catapults, yes.

Maybe in a siege fire arrows.

[Red Harvest]

They weren't used much as anti-personnel, but he AI loves to use them in that role. And the way they are implemented is a bit hard to swallow, especially when they are firing in heavy rain. So I plan on removing them for the same reasons I am removing wardogs and head hurlers.

[HarunTaiwan]

I do find satisfaction when they "vaporize" chariots or Elephants, but it's like Science Fiction.

[Wh1teWolf]

LMFAO you are freaks, and let me ask this, I am a history major and no where does it say that Fire Arrows were not used in that time frame so where do you come up with this crap?

Also I find that Fire Arrows have reduced damage in wet weather.

[RJV]

It is possible to eliminate the fire arrow special ability. Some smarter person probably already has this figured out, but it stumped me when I first tried.

In the past I've been annoyed by the AI's penchant to shoot fire arrows at infantry, cavalry, birds flying by, etc. Unfortunately, the fire arrow special ability is tied to foot archers and is not directly modifiable as a unit stat as best I can tell. However, the HA bug led me to revisit the problem. I tried using the "thrown" attribute for archers as we did with HA's, but that didn't eliminate fire arrows. So next I tried the following edit for Roman Archers in the export_descr_units.txt file:

Original:
stat_pri 7, 2, arrow, 120, 30, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25 ,1

Altered:
stat_pri 7, 2, javelin, 120, 30, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25 ,1

This worked! The fire arrow special ability was gone. However, this had the drawback of 1) the projectile being a javelin 2) The arc and range are reduced because the javelin has a different trajectory.

After this success, I decided to try something in descr_projectile_new.txt

What I did was to copy the whole entry for "projectile arrow" and place this copy at the bottom of the page. I then changed this copied section's name to:

projectile arrow2

After this I went back to my Roman Archers and changed their stats to:

stat_pri 7, 2, arrow2, 120, 30, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25 ,1

Initial tests indicate that this is working without crashing the game, etc. The archers appear to behave normally, but no longer have the fire arrow special ability. I need to do some more testing and see if it interferes with anything, such as AI deployment, etc.

If anyone notices a problem with this, please post it. Thanks!

Just out of interest, is it possible to mod this file to add a new 'thrown2' attribute which has a bow as the icon in battle - I still find it confusing seeing the javelin icon. No biggie of course, just a thought...

(at work now so don't have my files to hand)

Cheers,

Rob.

[Proletariat]

It is possible to eliminate the fire arrow special ability.

How do you plan to balance elephants? I can't imagine how cataphract elephants could be taken out without this otherwise somewhat cheesy tactic.

[The Stranger]

cut their hitpoints

[Red Harvest]

How do you plan to balance elephants? I can't imagine how cataphract elephants could be taken out without this otherwise somewhat cheesy tactic.

Don't really know. I haven't been facing them. I have found the other two types likely to rout for morale reasons. So I have not yet modded them.

[Bromley]

How do you plan to balance elephants? I can't imagine how cataphract elephants could be taken out without this otherwise somewhat cheesy tactic.

I did some spurious calcs over here to figure out elephant unit sizes. The conclusion was that the number in the file should be reduced to 2 per unit, which translates to 4 at Large (when Romans have 80 units). That might help offset any problem with not being able to spook them so easily.

[Red Harvest]

I did some spurious calcs over here to figure out elephant unit sizes. The conclusion was that the number in the file should be reduced to 2 per unit, which translates to 4 at Large (when Romans have 80 units). That might help offset any problem with not being able to spook them so easily.

You won't want to cut them that far as they are not meant to scale quite so literally. They will have too much trouble with cav that way. Cutting them by half is not trivial. The forest elephants require some special massaging to cut the unit size. For instance to cut their number in half you need to leave the number of crew at 6, and cut the beasts to 3. Then you need to edit the mounts file so that the 2nd rider is positioned decently on the beast. (He is stuck in "standing" position so I stood him in fashion to make it look as if he was sitting on back.) If you go below 6 with the crew, the game won't load. This is hardcoded limit.

[Bromley]

Thanks. I found your original post on the subject when I was trying to figure it out a while ago :) .

What's the trouble with cav? Is it that the cavalry use their charge to kill enough to send them amok?

[The Stranger]

cavalry are bad vs eles you can better use phalanx or pilum/javelin infantry.